Live life, one laugh at a time
Between the two of them, Ben and Amberly Caldwell have five children. They need humour and in their house laughter is never far away. Amberly’s is a booming, headback hoot, while Ben’s is more an ironic chuckle.
Their almost-1-year-old claps her hands and giggles like a mad thing. Pointing at her nose is her new trick and she often makes her way into her mum’s stand-up comedy acts. She was even on stage, strapped to Amberly’s front, when she was 6 weeks old.
‘‘A guy came up to me afterwards and was like: ‘Oh my God, it’s real’,’’ says Amberly. ‘‘I have also breastfed on stage.’’
Humour is their thing and they want to help others make it their thing too. They started The Comedy Hub, a stand-up group for people who want to give it a go, after they moved to Feilding. Ben noticed there wasn’t a comedy scene in the town. ‘‘So Amberly said: ‘Well, you’ll just have to start one up yourself’.’’
He put the call out to see who would be keen and instantly Dylan Stewart put his hand up. ‘‘He had moved here from Auckland and was looking for something too.’’
It gave Ben the push to do his first workshop. ‘‘Only two people came to that one, but then the next one we had five and it just slowly built.’’
The workshops are a place to come and learn the basics. They work on writing, body language, delivery and, most importantly, confidence to get up on stage.
‘‘I wanted people to feel comfortable giving feedback, so I was quite insistent that they told me what they thought that I could do better, so they could then extend that out to others.’’
Ben has been doing stand-up for about 10 years and he knows his way around, but he says he is always ‘‘developing and looking for ways to get better’’.
The Comedy Hub did its first show at The Dark Room in Palmerston North with 11 stand-up acts, most of them doing it for the first time.
‘‘We have a really cool group of people now – a real community,’’ Amberly says. ‘‘It’s great to see people developing as they get support.’’
A core group of about 20 people keep things going and they have had regular gigs and open mic nights for more than a year.
‘‘We just try to keep it real. I tell stories about my life and if there is another parent sitting in the audience thinking ‘oh wow, we are not the only ones’, if I can make somebody’s crazy life seem more normal, then that’s great.’’
And it’s a full-on life for the couple, with five kids, three of whom have special needs. ‘‘I don’t need to look for material further than my life,’’ says Amberly. ‘‘Mad things happen daily.’’
She and Ben often argue about who gets to use the best stories.
When Ben got up and said really personal things about Amberly in his act once, she responded in kind. ‘‘I got up and said some truths too,’’ she says, laughing.
Ben says laughing about it all helps them get through their days. ‘‘My main motivation with it all is that not only does it help me, but if I can help someone else to forget about their day and have a laugh and some relaxation – a bit of release – then that’s really cool.’’
Ben says his goal for the group is to keep building the comedy scene and get more people involved.
Amberly chuckles and says she wants to survive parenthood and get famous enough to meet Billy Connelly. ‘‘If I did I would probably simultaneously, cry, scream, wet my pants and faint.’’
But right now, it’s late and Miss almost-1-year-old is still awake and touching her nose like she is the cleverest thing on earth.
‘‘You have to laugh, it’s just all so nuts,’’ says Amberly, doing just that. ‘‘What else can you do?’’
When Ben and Amberly Caldwell moved to Feilding they couldn’t find a comedy scene, so they created one themselves. Carly Thomas finds out about what makes them giggle.
‘‘We just try to keep it real. I tell stories about my life . . . If I can make somebody’s crazy life seem more normal, then that’s great.’’ Amberly Caldwell